In a virtualization environment, hosts use virtual switches to join clients (or tenants) in a network fabric local to a server. Uplink ports on the switch may be connected to other virtual fabrics or to a real LAN through the host's physical network card. Co-locating diverse clients in a virtualization environment requires a significant degree of resource isolation. Clients of one virtual machine should not be able to access CPU processes, stored data, or the network traffic of another. Techniques, such as assigning unique virtual local area network (VLAN) IDs, may be used to insure that traffic belonging to each unique client is sufficiently isolated. Virtual switches automatically tag traffic from a particular client, transparently providing data isolation from other clients.
Tenancies in a virtualization environment may require dynamic allocation, termination and/or modification (increasing or decreasing capacity) according to requirements of the clients. This can make network management a difficult and costly proposition as known virtual machine provisioning processes for given tasks may be resource intensive and require significant human involvement and configuration. In particular, it may difficult to optimize resource allocation to meet the different requirements of multiple clients. Furthermore, additional inefficiencies and/or disadvantages may occur as a result of the administrator for the provisioning and assigning of resources being different from an administrator for the virtualization environment, and users thereof, who may be unfamiliar with the requirements for resource provisioning.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system that allows for the improved assigning and provisioning resources, including storage resources, in a virtualization environment.